


Meet the Parents

by morganoconner



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: M/M, Meet the Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-09
Updated: 2008-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s parents get suspicious. Then they get more suspicious. Then they get a shocker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meet the Parents

_Two weeks after the battle for the Allspark…_

“Sam, uh…your mother and I have been wondering something.”

Sam polished off the last of his sandwich and looked up at his father. “Yeah Dad, what’s up?” He was eager to get going, he was planning on taking a quick road trip to visit Will Lennox, and let Bumblebee get a chance to catch up with Ironhide, who had decided to remain with the captain for a while.

“Well, we were wondering…what happened to the old beat up car I bought you? And how did you get your hands on…that one?” He gestured out the window, where Bumblebee was gleaming in the sunlight.

 _Geez, it took them two whole weeks to notice_. Sam shook his head. “Well, it’s a long story, kind of, but there was this guy who’s really into classic cars. He wanted a chance to take mine and fix it up real nicely, and…well, this was the trade-off. He wasn’t big on new cars, just classics, and he had this one just sitting in his garage.” Sam was very glad his parents were gullible.

“Hmm. Well, all right then. It’s a nice car, take care of it.”

_Duh._

88888

_The middle of Sam’s senior year…_

“Sam, you’re five minutes late!”

“Sorry, Mom.” Sam closed the door and flung his backpack across the room, letting it settle in a heap before kicking his shoes off and scooping Mojo up in his arms. “I was at Mikaela’s working on a science project, we lost track of time.”

Judy Witwicky could be a force to be reckoned with when she hadn’t had a bit too much to drink. Sam hadn’t been lying when he said she had a temper. So when she came into the living room with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face, Sam knew he was in trouble. He looked around desperately for his dad, but Ron was conspicuously absent.

“Now, Sam, I don’t mind you being a little late for a school project,” his mom began. He didn’t have a chance to breathe a sigh of relief before, “But since I called Mikaela’s house and she told me you two broke up _six months ago_ , I find it a little hard to believe that’s where you were. I want the truth – and an explanation – now.”

Sam gulped. “Well, you see, umm… I didn’t tell you about Mikaela and me because I was…umm…embarrassed! Right, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed ‘cause I know how much you and Dad liked her, see? And it was a stupid fight that we broke up over, so I’ve been trying to find a way to make it up to her, so I figured if I told you we broke up, and then we got back together, you’d just get confused, and…yeah. So that’s the story.”

“Mmhmm… But that still doesn’t explain where you’ve been tonight.”

“Oh, that! I was over at the cliff, working on a science project like I said.” Well, the first part wasn’t a lie, at least.

His mom just sighed. “Oh, Sam, I swear you spend more time with that car than you do with your friends at school. But as long as you were getting homework done…”

Sam didn’t point out that he didn’t have any friends at school. He didn’t tell her that his only friends were giant robots from outer space, an air force captain and his wife, and a computer code analyst with a British accent and a habit of speaking before thinking. He thought she might get confused and just walk away looking for a drink if he said any of that. He certainly didn’t tell her that he really hadn’t been doing homework with his car while they’d sat on the outlook enjoying each other’s company. Instead, all he said was, “Yup, definitely. Paper’s gonna get an A for sure.”

“Well, all right. And as for Mikaela…” His mom pursed her lips. “Well, she’s gorgeous, to be sure! But maybe you two just didn’t have a lot in common. It happens.”

Sam choked on a laugh. _If only you knew… Then again, maybe not._

88888

_Sam’s Graduation…_

“Surprise.”

Sam, who had been talking and laughing with his parents at the end of his graduation ceremony, whirled around at the familiar voice, not daring to believe it.

“Bee!”

There was Bumblebee…or, at least, the holographic, human version of himself he’d come up with all on his own and had been working for months to perfect. The image smiled, blue eyes sparkling on a tanned face, arms crossed.

“Oh my god, Bee!” He stared in shock, then lowered his voice. “We’re, like, a hundred feet away from the car!”

“I’ve been working with Optimus in an effort to surprise you. I hope I’ve succeeded. It gets better.” The eyes sparkled again, with mischief.

“Bee?” a pointed voice asked. Sam spun around to face his mother and her raised eyebrow.

“Umm, Mom, this is…Benjamin! We call him B for short. He’s my, uh…”

Bumblebee’s holographic projection came up beside him and slung an arm around his shoulders. An arm that felt completely and totally real. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Witwicky. It’s a pleasure to meet you finally. My name is Ben, I’m Sam’s boyfriend.” The image squeezed Sam’s shoulder and held out its other hand to his father while Sam choked.

“Sam, is _this_ why you’ve been gone so much lately?” Judy asked. Her voice seemed much more high-pitched than normal.

Sam could only nod dumbly.

88888

_Two weeks after Sam’s graduation…_

Sam sat on the edge of the overlook, feet dangling over the side. Next to him sat Bumblebee’s projection, which he preferred to use whenever possible to practice. He hadn’t yet mastered being able to keep it solid for more than exactly one hundred feet from the car, and he couldn’t keep it up for more than two hours at a time, but he was working on it.

“Your parents seem to like me.”

“I think they’d like anything that would explain why I left a beautiful girl like Mikaela. My mom wondered about it for months. I couldn’t exactly tell her I fell for my Camaro who happens to turn into a giant robot, could I?”

“Do you have a preference to this version of me, or to my Autobot form?”

Sam glanced over. “Neither, Bee. They’re both you. I hope you didn’t think I’d ask you to always appear like this just because I’m a human. It’s not the human projection I fell for, remember?”

Bumblebee seemed to accept this, as he nodded and turned back to stare up at the night sky.

Sam reached over and stroked a hand down the Autobot’s human arm. Curious, he asked, “Can you feel that?”

“Yes. This holographic projection is directly linked to me…another thing Optimus taught me. I can cancel it at any time, but as long as I keep it up, I can feel anything that happens to it.”

“So…” Sam scooched over and ran a hand through the incredibly realistic (and very soft) hair. “If I did this…”

In the distance, the car’s engine purred. Right here, Bumblebee closed his eyes. “Sam, I’d like to…”

“Hmm?”

Bumblebee considered himself a fast learner, and he’d spent quite a bit of time learning from Sam and Mikaela in those first couple of months. He leaned over and kissed Sam gently, then with a bit more force when Sam let out a low moan.

_Two hours later…_

“Sam, I know we lifted your curfew when you graduated, but you should be a little more considerate of the time, and goodness, what happened to you, you’re filthy!”

Sam didn’t think the “child” excuse would work as well as it once had. Instead, he opted for, “Sorry, we were out hiking. I’ll try and pay better attention to the time, I promise.”

Judy nodded. “Well, I guess I should just be glad that your only companion isn’t that car anymore.”

Sam struggled not to choke. “Yeah, guess that wasn’t very healthy, huh?”

88888

_A year later…_

“I don’t know where he’s gone off to now, Ron, and he isn’t answering his cell phone.” Judy was pacing. Her son was almost twenty years old, but she would never stop worrying about him incessantly. “It’s almost two a.m!”

Ron Witwicky shook his head. “Judy, what are you going to do when that boy moves into his own place?”

“He would never do that,” she said with a firm nod. “He knows better, he’ll just live here for the rest of his life.”

Ron grinned and shook his head.

“Ron, please, can’t we go look for him? He could be in trouble!”

Ron, knowing she would never let him rest of he didn’t agree, sighed and nodded. “We’ll try the lookout first, I guess. I know he spends a lot of time there.”

“Oh, I hope he isn’t with Ben! Wouldn’t that just be horribly embarrassing?”

_Fifteen minutes later…_

“Ron, what are all those strange lights?” Judy asked, pointing through the trees as they rounded the bend in the road leading to the overlook. He was about to answer when they came within sight of where the lights were coming from.

“Oh my lord!” Judy gasped, her hand firmly over her mouth.

Ron just stared. There was his son, and there was no Benjamin in sight. Instead, his boy was surrounded by four… “What are those, robots?” he said to no one in particular. Also standing next to his son was a young man he would be his life had served in the military. It was the way he held himself, he supposed.

Carefully, he got out of the car, eyes wide. “Sam? What is all this?”

Sam spun, tripped over a rock, and was balanced by Will. “Oh, shit,” he said, then broke into a run towards his parents.

“Mom, Dad, what are you doing here?!”

“We came to look for you, we got worried and you weren’t answering your cell phone!”

Sam realized he probably hadn’t heard it over the sound of the Autobots transforming. They didn’t all get together very often, and this meeting had been planned two months ago so they could catch up.

“I…oh, Geez. I’m fine, see?”

“Fine!” Judy screeched. “This doesn’t look fine to me!”

“Sam?” Sam turned and smiled gratefully at Bumblebee’s projection. “Maybe I should explain this to them.”

Ron blinked. “I didn’t see you standing there, Ben.”

“I wasn’t, sir.”

Sam watched Bumblebee transform into his Camaro form, watched him allow his human image to flicker, and watched his parents take it all in with identical expressions of shock. He sighed. _This is gonna be a long night._


	2. Calm the Parents

_Fifteen minutes later, when the initial shock has worn off…_

“Look, Mom, you’re freaking out. You need to stop. Why don’t we go home, where we can talk about this calmly and rationally?”

“Calm down! You want me to calm down?! How can you expect me to calm down, Sam!”

The Autobots were watching with mild interest (Sam could see Ironhide unobtrusively examining his cannons), and Lennox was hanging a little ways back in case Sam needed another human to back him up.

“Mom, really, we should go home and talk about this. Away from the Autobots that are freaking you out so much. If it’s easier, I can even leave Bumblebee – uh, my car - here for now, all right? I’ll even ask Will to come, he was a military captain and can explain all this a lot better than I can. Please?” Sam looked to his father. “Dad? Is that okay?”

His father looked around, from one Autobot to the next, before his gaze settled on Sam again. “All right, son. Judy, come on, let’s get in the car. Sam, you and your friend, in the back seat.”

Sam shot an apologetic glance at Will, who waved it off, spoke a few soft words to Ironhide and the others, and joined Sam in his parents’ car. With one last glance at the bots, they sped away.

_Thirty minutes later, in the safety of their own home…_

His mom was pacing. And drinking. These were never a good combination during the best of times. Together, they always meant trouble for Sam. He plopped down in a chair and motioned for Will to sit in the one across from him. His parents, he knew, would take the couch, where they could sit ramrod straight and be the most intimidating together. This was a rarity in the Witwicky household, but it certainly wasn’t a first.

Finally, they were all seated. Judy took another sip of her drink before Ron carefully took the glass from her.

“All right, Sam. What were those things?” his father asked.

Sam bristled, as he always did when someone referred to his friends as something other than the super-cool sentient beings they were. At a look from Lennox, he calmed himself. “They’re called Autobots, and they’re from a destroyed planet called Cybertron. And they’re not _things_ , they’re smarter than we are. They have feelings and thoughts, just like we do.”

Will cleared his throat. “This started a couple years back. The night your family was taken by the government for questioning? When Sam and Mikaela were separated from you, they were brought to Sector 7, which is where most of us learned all of this. They had had contact with the aliens, and at that point, the government needed any information they could get. I was brought in with my team because we had been attacked by two of them at our base in Qatar.”

“They’re dangerous? Oh, I knew it, they looked like they would be!” Sam’s mom started babbling until his father put his hand on her arm and motioned for Will to continue.

“No, Ma’am, the Autobots you saw aren’t. What attacked my men were Decepticons, who have been battling the Autobots for thousands of years to get a powerful object and take over the planet with it. When their mission failed, when Sam destroyed the object and killed their leader (Sam winced, not thinking they needed so much information), the Decepticons, what were left of them, fled. There hasn’t been a sighting of them since.”

“So then why are these…Autobots…still here?” she asked unhappily.

Sam answered quietly. “They have no place else to go. This is their home now.”

“I don’t like this,” Judy moaned. “I don’t like this at all. Sam, you’ve been in contact with these things all this time? Who knows what it’s done to you!”

Sam was getting fed up. “Nothing, Mom! It hasn’t done anything to me, except give me a whole bunch of friends that I can count on, who I would trust with my life! Look, Will was in the military, and even he trusts them! Ironhide has been in hiding as Will’s truck since that day two years ago! Will has a two-year-old daughter that he trusts Ironhide with! Will nothing convince you that they’re okay?!”

His mother looked very taken aback. “But, Sam, you don’t know anything about them!”

“I know more than you think,” he said. He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “Dad, do you remember when you told me I had a legacy? And you gave me all of my great-great-grandfather’s old stuff?”

“Well, of course I do,” his dad replied, confused.

“He wasn’t crazy, Dad. He had discovered exactly what he said. One of the Decepticons – their leader – had crashed landed in the arctic. He found him by accident, and linked my fate with theirs because of it. The Autobots are my legacy. And they’re my friends.”

“And your car? What’s that?” Judy asked shrewdly.

“He,” Sam said, taking a breath “is exactly what he told you he was. My boyfriend. And his name is Bumblebee, not Benjamin.”

Will looked up at him, startled. This was news to him. The only other person Sam thought knew was Optimus, and even that was questionable.

Judy looked faint.

88888

_Two weeks later…_

“Sam, honey?”

Sam sighed. It had been endless questions for the last two weeks, questions that rarely ever made sense, and when she asked the few that did, she always seemed to not like his answers. But he had promised himself he wouldn’t lie to his parents anymore. He’d even tried to stay home more the last couple weeks, for his mom’s sake. But it was starting to grate. Bumblebee had stayed away from the house during that time, afraid of upsetting Sam’s parents more than they already were. Sam was really starting to miss him. “Yeah, Mom,” he said, checking another sigh.

“This probably isn’t any of my business, but…well…” She was wringing her hands, and that was _never_ a good thing. “How do you and Ben…Bumblebee… _do_ things together? Like…you know, sex.”

Sam choked and banged his head against the desk.

88888

_And another week after that…_

“Mom, just so you know, I’m going out,” Sam said, grabbing up his overnight bag and walking briskly toward the front door. His departure was halted just as he was reaching for the handle.

“Where are you going, who will you be with, and when will you be back?” the Witwicky matriarch asked from her place at the table, where she was sipping a mug of coffee and looking shrewdly over at her son.

Sam sighed. “Y’know, Mom, I really am twenty years old. I’m also pretty capable of taking care of myself.”

“And you’re not leaving this house until you’ve answered all of those questions to my satisfaction.”

“Fine,” he said with another sigh, setting the bag down. “Will is picking me up, we’re going to the outlook to meet up with Maggie, a friend of ours who just flew in from D.C., and the Autobots. From there, we’re all going for a relaxing weekend at Will’s house, since Sarah invited all of us and it’s a nice little cut off area that the ‘bots can have some freedom. Before you ask, _yes_ , Bee will be there, and for the record, when I come home, he’s also returning. It’s been three weeks, it’s not fair to make him stay away longer than that, and, y’know, he _is_ also my car, so having him around comes in handy. I’ll be home in a couple of days.”

Judy carefully set her mug down and glared at him, lips pursed. “I still don’t like this, and I certainly don’t approve of this…whatever it is you have with that car. But I suppose I really can’t argue with you, and you say that air force captain will be there as well, so I guess it should be safe…”

“I love Bee, Mom. You should really get used to the idea. And you’ve been getting to know him for over a year now. Just because there’s more to him than you originally thought, doesn’t change who he is. You liked him well enough then.” He didn’t wait for a reply, just grabbed his bag again and left the house, climbing gratefully into Ironhide’s cab and trying not to think too much as they sped off toward the outlook.

88888

_Thirty minutes later…_

Sam jumped out of Ironhide’s cab and made his way over to the quiet Camaro parked near the edge of the overlook. He ran a hand over the hood. “Hey, Bee,” he said quietly. “Missed you.”

The air next to him shimmered and he was suddenly enveloped in strong arms, warm breath tickling the side of his neck. Sam was struck by how ridiculously realistic their holograms could be.

“Missed you too,” Bee said. “I had convinced myself they would never allow you to leave.”

Sam smiled. “They’re going to have to get used to it sooner or later. I told them you were coming home when we got back.”

Autobots so rarely smiled, but when Bumblebee decided to use his human projection, he had a smile that could light up the universe in Sam’s mind.

88888

_A weekend later…_

“Are you truly sure this is a good idea, Sam?” The disembodied voice came quietly as Sam was pulling up in front of his parent’s house, startling him because Bee rarely actually spoke when in car form.

He ran a hand over the steering wheel. “Yes, I’m sure. For the millionth time, I’m sure. That’s all you’ve asked all weekend, and the answer isn’t going to change.”

With a resigned sigh as Sam stepped out of the car, Bee created and solidified his human projection and followed Sam up to the door to his house. Sam grasped his hand tightly and opened the door.

If he was surprised to see his parents both standing in the kitchen, he didn’t let it show, just grasped Bee’s hand tighter and closed the door behind them.

“Mom, Dad…you both know Bee. I’m sure you can learn to be civil, or let me know now and I’ll start working on finding new accommodations.” He figured short and to the point was probably better.

Bee glanced at him, startled. “Sam, no, I don’t want to be the cause of -”

“No, Sam is right.”

Both Sam and Bee looked over at Judy, shocked. Her lips were pursed in a tight frown, but her eyes were resigned.

“He shouldn’t have to live here with two people who can’t support his decisions. I may not like it, but he’s an adult now.” She glared a little at Bee, despite herself, and he shrank back, just enough for Sam to notice. “I don’t like it. This can only lead to trouble, I’m sure. My son dating a…a…an _alien_. But…we’ll both try to respect it, for Sam’s sake.”

“Thank you,” Bee said quietly.

This time, it was Sam’s smile that was blinding as he went forward and hugged both his parents tightly.

88888

_A few hours later, when all is dark, the parents have gone to bed, and Bumblebee is outside in stasis…_

“Wow, so it all worked out then? I’m glad for you, Sam,” Maggie said over the webcam with a grin.

“Yeah, tell me about it. I was pretty freaked, y’know? But they seem to be cool…or trying to be, anyway. Actually, and I dunno if they or Bee are more freaked by this, they want to pick a day to go to the overlook and have an in-depth conversation with him to try and get to know him better in his normal Autobot form.” Sam grinned in delight, imagining how that conversation would go. He was going to go just for the popcorn moments.

Maggie laughed. “Well, I’ll be honest, when Will first told me what he’d found out about you and Bumblebee, I found it…unlikely. But you two are great together, really. And…well, this is going to sound strange, all things considered.”

“What’s up, Maggie?” He took a few deep swallows from his can of Pepsi.

“Well, I don’t even live with my parents anymore, but eventually, they’ll need to know…well, Ratchet and I were wondering if you could offer any advice, since now you’ve been there and all.”

He very promptly spewed Pepsi out through his nose.

_End (Really this time!)_


End file.
